A Confederacy of Cargo Cult Coders

I hate to say it but I feel that one of the biggest problems with Software Engineering is the prevalence of programmers who are Cargo Cult Coders.  Now I know this may seem a bit extreme but it is my feeling that many software projects suffer in part due to the fact that most developers are mediocre at best and there are quite a few developers some who are more senior who are "faking it" .  So before you call me a cynic or worse, think about this, it’s pretty well known that really good developers are really rare and good developers are rare.  So let’s assume for sake of argument that developer ability falls on the Normal Distribution, I am not asserting that it does, that means the vast majority of developers fall into the average category it also runs along the lines of the 80/20 rule in that most developers range from average to bad.

Now I have seen these types of developers a fair amount and this is one possible down side of frameworks such as Spring and Hibernate.  If you read my blog you know that I am a big fan of frameworks and the concept in general, but they can be abused as can any other technique or methodology. The plus side of technologies like Spring and Hibernate is that good developers can quickly create large complex well engineered systems, of course mediocre and bad programmers can, by blindly implementing framework patterns, create large complex monstrosities.  I have seen cases where through the use of cutting and pasting of example code, bad programmers can create working systems with a limited understanding of the underlying technologies, I often use googled code snippets myself, but at least I understand the fundamentals and if I don’t fully understand what I am doing at the time I try to go back and learn more about how the underlying technology works.  Essentially these Cargo Cult Programmers are mostly just configuring boilerplate code and code snippets by trial and error within the confines of a framework.

On one of my previous contracts I had the misfortune to work with perhaps one of the worst developers I have ever met, he was truly a consummate cargo cult coder, he was musician turned programmer¹ with about eight years of professional experience.  He had zero understanding of Computer Science fundamentals and seemingly no understanding of good Software Engineering principles and yet during his career he had accumulated enough basic knowledge of Web Design, Javascript, Java, Spring, Hibernate, SQL and various other technologies and components to cobble together enterprise applications.  Ironically his ability to create these applications was actually somewhat impressive, as long as you didn’t look at the code.  I think the scariest thing about this developer is that he had garnered a false sense of the level of his abilities which he would project, which in turn would cause others to falsely believe that he was a highly competent developer.

I use this particular developer as an example, but this is a trend that I am seeing, developers who now claim themselves as "senior level" because they have gained proficiency as cargo cult coders, but when you see their non boilerplate code it will often demonstrate an egregious lack of knowledge of basic concepts like cohesion, coupling, inheritance, basic OOP design, threading, the underlying workings of the framework technologies themselves, etc.  I think the biggest danger is the complacency and perhaps self delusion or naivety which can even manifest itself as hubris, that these developers acquire from this limited perspective, in fact it is ultimately self limiting behavior because all new technologies and languages are then viewed in the same narrow context, usually as another resume bullet, practitioners of what I call RDD (Resume Driven Development).

I believe that you can boil down what makes a good developer to two relatively simple things, one is ability and the other is desire.  Ability is a complex web of inherent skill, intellect including a good memory, experience etc. and desire is the hunger for knowledge and aspiration to want to improve one’s skill and the passion to find better ways to do things. In some ways the two go hand in hand but not always, the "consummate cargo cult coder" from above had a high degree of passion, but he was stubborn and did not work well with others and was unable to take advantage of the opportunity to benefit from the knowledge of others, I actually found his situation to be somewhat tragic.  The other side is people who are talented who lack desire, ironically I have been accused of this one, it’s usually not due to my lack of desire, I just sometimes find what I am working on to be boring which in turn can cause me to lag in terms of productivity, fortunately this is fairly aberrant behavior for me.

Sadly I have recently been on some pretty dysfunctional teams and I feel the biggest tragedy is that on those teams there have been developers in whom I saw that they could be more than they were on the project, but they mainly lacked guidance, which I could not provide due to team’s dynamics.  This type of situation is really a double tragedy, it is tragic for the developer in that a better opportunity for the developer is missed, and it is a missed opportunity for project, the team, and the management of the team as they could have a had a better developer who was producing better quality code.  I guess what I am saying is that there should be a way to try to avoid wasting developer potential, I think this is some of what Agile Process tries to achieve.  "Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done." I think this should be taken further to try maximize each developer’s skill and inspire their inherent passion and to kindle increased passion to maximize the efficiency of the team.

If you are lucky the cargo cult coders on your team are just plodding along and hopefully not messing up your codebase too much and are the ones who just need that extra guidance or encouragement. Unfortunately they can do far worse damage, there are many out there who have been getting by for many years and have formed overrated opinions of themselves, these are the worst, not only can they disrupt the software structure they can often disrupt the team dynamics and create more substantial problems, in my Driven Development post I mentioned developers who I was in conflict with creating a CDD (Cognitive Dissonance Development) environment, they were cargo cult coders who had taken very defensive and recalcitrant positions, you couldn’t reason with them because if you tried to talk about good design principles or standard practices you were speaking a language they did not understand, they only saw software development as learning some new technology that they could then claim to be experts in.  They will pollute your system with redundant inconsistent shoddy code that will degrade its quality, performance and maintainability.  Worst yet, they will be excessively defensive in the face of criticism, which makes code reviews hard if not impossible, and since they don’t read or understand good engineering principles they often argue against them.  Also they will often disrupt the team dynamics and poison it with their defensive and sometimes arrogant behavior this can result in the team becoming highly dysfunctional which can create a toxic working environment that is hostile to good developers and is the opposite of the optimal environment in that the team will not function as whole that is greater than the sum of its parts it will function as whole that is less than the sum of its parts.

¹ I have worked with plenty of non-technical/non-CS converts and there are some who are good and go the extra mile to learn the basics and beyond.